Polarized vortices in optical speckle field: observation of rare polarization singularities

Opt Express. 2015 Mar 9;23(5):6041-9. doi: 10.1364/OE.23.006041.

Abstract

Using a recent method able to characterize the polarimetry of a random field with high polarimetric and spatial accuracy even near places of destructive interference, we study polarized optical vortices at a scale below the transverse correlation width of a speckle field. We perform high accuracy polarimetric measurements of known singularities described with an half-integer topological index and we study rare integer index singularities which have, to our knowledge, never been observed in a speckle field.